GPU Thermal PAds & grease replacement.

[Blacksmith1]

I don't know why so many people give that artic compound a bad rap. I had similar results when i did my system with it. it may no be the best out there, but for the price you can't beat the performance

[peti1212]

wow, pretty nice improvement just for changing the pads.

[foxmobouser]

The GSO already had what looked like similar pads to the ones I got (good job EVGA) just thinner ones and they were in pretty good shape so I only replaced the GPU's TIM which was pretty old. On the 285 GTX the mosfets had some kind of fabric pad with white ceramic like stuff that was all falling off so I put the new pads in there. I imagine the pads where a bit thick at first and the GPU had no good contact with the TIM i put on there so I had to remove the whole thing again and that was the case that the material was not making good contact with the heatsink. I added more TIM and that seemed to do the trick althou I must have not done a very good job becauce the temps on the GTX are 1-2C higher. I plan to put a big piece of the Pad I got for the mosfets on the GPU to see how it does. As you can see the 480 GTX had nothing done on it, has best air flow of all in case and is still running hot (well hot in my opinion).

[foxmobouser]

wow, pretty nice improvement just for changing the pads.

will have to test higher clocks to see if it made any difference, the best comparison will be when i slap the pad on the GPU and see weather it performs better than the stock TIM or the Arctic I already put on it.

[peti1212]

What are your case temps? I'm running two GTX 580s in a case that does not have any side ventilation, and I just have a single fan blowing into the whole case, but three fans blowing out. I experience hot air coming from the PC when gaming, but during just normal use on a normal day it is just slightly warm. I'd say as long as nothing gets to the point where it is hard to touch due to being too hot (except for the video card) then you should be fine. If any of the heatsinks in your system gets really hot where it burns you, then you might need additional cooling. With my setup, it gets to the point where it is hot, but not so hot where it would burn my fingers.

Of course heat kills over time, but all of the chipsets that are running on the system are tested at 85C+ and if they don't pass the tests, they cannot be sold, so even if the chipset seems to be running at 60C - 65C ( X58 ), depending on which motherboard you are running, around 40-50C on P67, then you should be just fine. As long as your 2600K is within 70-75C it should be fine, though I like to run mine around 65-70C at higher clock speeds, like yours.

[foxmobouser]

I havent really looked at my case temps but that probablly because everything pretty much feels pretty cool to the touch. I have an Azza Solano casse with 3 140mm front fans, one at back, huge side and top fan plus 2 fan mountings at bottom. When all the gpus are folding they do raise the temps a bit, even the cpu's temp jump up a notch but nothing dramatic. I like to keep most of my hardware under 75, over 70 I consider hot. I dont have the pics with me but I did replace the thermal compound on the 285 GTX with the thermal pad and to my disapointment the temps went up to 80 when folding. The GPU is huge so I ended up wasting alot of TIM on it, and I was finally able to get it to run at 69 with an moderate application of some left over shin-etsu.

[zachig]

Like I said before, you can always try the IC7 TIM I was recommending. I'm pretty sure it'll give you a decent 2-4 degrees.

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[foxmobouser]

Like I said before, you can always try the IC7 TIM I was recommending. I'm pretty sure it'll give you a decent 2-4 degrees.

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Yea going to try that out, had a left over OCZ rebate card I used to get it off amazon.

[Blacksmith1]

if nothing else you can do like i did and lower the ambient temp in the room, I keep mine at 68 F.

[erek]

Just make a search over eBay for 'Thermal Pads'. You'll find many...be sure to select good ones. For GPU MosFETs and memory chips, I'd recommend going with thick ones having a thickness of ~1.5mm. Also pay attention to the Thermal Conductivity (choose anything equal or below 3.2w/m-K...lower is better).


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i ordered some fujipoly 6.0W/mK at 1.5mm, but some people are suggesting it will cause problems with the mosfet/gpu making contact with the HSF on a Radeon HD 6970...


(long story short... i went to change out TIM on my 6970s and discovered some of the ram thermal pads were damaged and attempted to use arctic silver ceramique as a replacement, but my temps went up...)

do you think the 1.5mm thickness will still be acceptable in a 6970?

[zachig]

i ordered some fujipoly 6.0W/mK at 1.5mm, but some people are suggesting it will cause problems with the mosfet/gpu making contact with the HSF on a Radeon HD 6970...


(long story short... i went to change out TIM on my 6970s and discovered some of the ram thermal pads were damaged and attempted to use arctic silver ceramique as a replacement, but my temps went up...)

do you think the 1.5mm thickness will still be acceptable in a 6970?

I think they'll be just fine for your 6970. But if you're uncertain you can always lay one layer of pads over the chips and re-attach the heatsink and then remove the heatsink again and see if the pads got squeezed a little. If so, then you have good contact. If not, you can always use 2 layers of pads, preffered with a good thermal compound/paste between the two pads.

GOOD LUCK!

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[foxmobouser]

well I can say that for my 9600 gso's and 285 gtx the 1.5 was a tad thick. When the pads on the mosfets are thick then the heatsink does not make too good of a contact with the gpu, thus you either get higher temps or have to use alot of thermal paste. I also smeared on some ceramic compound for better contact.

[Blacksmith1]

As I understand it the pads melt then resolidify over and over, which is why old ones are around the die rather than on it when they get old. if yoou get it hot then tighen it a smidge it shouold improve the contact.

[Joshua_Mahr]

I have had some great results with Antec Formula 7 on GPU's and CPU's.

[Cody_Irwin]

Yeap dont forget http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-080-_-Product

Is the stuff Asetek uses pretty much on their cpu coolers for the antec/corsair and their ALC's like the h70h/h60/920/620 ect.